5.31.3
Making these your starting point, you will easily attack Euboea, which is a great and a wealthy island, no smaller than Cyprus and very easy to take. A hundred ships suffice for the conquest of all these.”
5.31.4
“This plan which you set forth,” Artaphrenes answered, “is profitable for the king's house, and all your advice is good except as regards the number of the ships. Not one hundred but two hundred ships will be ready for you when the spring comes. The king too, however, must himself consent to this.”
ch. 32
5.32.1
When Aristagoras heard that, he went away to Miletus in great joy. Artaphrenes sent a messenger to Susa with the news of what Aristagoras said, and when Darius himself too had consented to the plan, he equipped two hundred triremes and a very great company of Persians and their allies in addition. For their general he appointed Megabates, a Persian of the Achaemenid family, cousin to himself and to Darius. This was he whose daughter (if indeed the tale is true) Pausanias the Lacedaemonian, son of Cleombrotus, at a later day betrothed to himself, since it was his wish to possess the sovereignty of Hellas. After appointing Megabates general, Artaphrenes sent his army away to Aristagoras.
ch. 33
5.33.1
Then Megabates, note bringing Aristagoras from Miletus, the Ionian army, and the Naxians, pretended to be sailing to the Hellespont, but when he came to Chios, he put in with his ships at Caucasa note so that he might cross with a north wind to Naxos.
5.33.2
Since it was not fated that the Naxians were to be destroyed by this force, the following things took place. As Megabates was making his rounds among the ships' watches, it chanced that there was no watch on the ship of Myndus. Megabates, very angry at this, ordered his guards to find the captain of this ship, whose name was Scylax, and thrust him partly through an oar-hole of the ship and bound him there so that his head was outside the ship and his body inside.
5.33.3
When Scylax had been bound, someone brought word to Aristagoras, that his Myndian friend was bound and being disgracefully treated by Megabates. Aristagoras then went and pleaded with the Persian for Scylax, but since he obtained nothing that he requested, he went and released the man himself. When Megabates learned this, he took it very badly and was angry at Aristagoras.
5.33.4
Aristagoras, however, said, “But you, what have you to do with these matters? Did not Artaphrenes send you to obey me and to sail wherever I bid you? Why are you so meddlesome?” This response on the part of Aristagoras enraged Megabates, who, went night fell, sent men in a boat to Naxos to tell the Naxians of the trouble in store for them.
ch. 34
5.34.1
Now the Naxians had no suspicion at all that it was they who were to be attacked by that force. However, when they learned the truth, they immediately brought inside their walls all that was in their fields, stored both meat and drink in case of a siege, and strengthened their walls.
5.34.2
The Naxians, then, made all preparations to face the onset of war. When their enemies had brought their ships over from Chios to Naxos, it was a fortified city that they attacked, and for four months they besieged it.
